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Ginnie Garraty gave up on sleeping around midnight, and gave up on lying in bed, staring blankly at the ceiling a few hours after that. She’s no stranger to sleepless nights. There were the numb, endless nights after William was killed in their bed that always felt too large and too cold without him there. Or even the agonizing, bone-tiring nights of staying up all night, glued to the television during the Long Walk. It was a different sort of sleeplessness now, a sort of anxious excitement that makes her feel somehow incredibly young, like she’s still a child on Christmas Eve.
Her son is alive, her son came home. Her son is asleep in his childhood bedroom full of battered adventure novels and drawings of airplanes in the twin bed that he outgrew when he hit his first growth spurt, but that they hadn’t had the money to replace. Maybe now they could.
She stands in the hallway, wrapped in the threadbare flannel bathrobe that had once belonged to her husband, staring at the warm yellow light that spills out from under Ray’s door. Maybe he couldn’t sleep either, or he’d fallen asleep with the light still on. Either way, she should go in, switch it off. No use running up the electric bill this time of year. But she still finds herself hesitating with her hand hovering above the doorknob. She thinks about her husband again, about the old thought experiment he told her about once - the one about the cat who could be both alive and dead. Part of her worries she’ll open the door to find the room empty, the bed unslept in for weeks.
She hears a noise from the room, the faint creak of furniture, of someone turning over in an old twin bed, and it gives her the courage to quietly open the door.
When her eyes adjust to the low light, it's not her son that she sees right away but his friend, or guardian angel. Peter McVries sits in her son’s bed, back to the headboard, reading one of her son’s dog eared books, dressed in one of her son’s old flannels. He turns when he notices her, and when he lowers the book she can see Ray tucked against his side with a hand curled against his shoulder. Her stomach turns over at the easy intimacy on display between her son and this strange boy. It’s familiar, it’s the way William would stay up reading those contraband books of his, the ones that got him in so much trouble, in their bed as she slept. It’s innocent, casual even, but it still sends a cold rush of fear down her veins. The kind of primal, maternal fear that sent all the alarm bells blaring that told her your son is in danger. Your son is making a dangerous choice.
“Couldn’t sleep, Mrs. Garraty?” Peter asks, voice low. She shakes her head, eyes still fixed on Ray. “Me neither, been up all night.”
“I worry that if I fall asleep, I’ll wake up and he’ll be gone.” She whispers. “I just...I had to see him.”
“You had to make sure.” Peter fills in. “But it still feels like a dream.”
“Yes.” Ginnie echoes. “It still feels like a dream.”
She meets his gaze then. Brown eyes, like the ones Ray inherited from his father, but darker. He’s undeniably handsome, this stranger in her home. He’s got the wide eyes and flawless skin of an old movie star, and the scar that runs down his cheek somehow makes him look more mysterious and more approachable all at once. He can’t be that much older than Ray, and it strikes her suddenly as odd and ridiculous that she knows this boy, this man, this siren, would die for her son a hundred times over but she doesn’t know how old he is.
Who are you? She wants to ask. Why did you save my son? She’s both grateful and terrified. When she dropped Ray off at the starting line, she’d hoped of course, but she never really thought he’d come back to her. And if he did, it would be as someone she didn’t recognize. A scraped out shell of her son. She didn’t think he’d come home like this, still able to laugh and talk animatedly with his hands and follow her around the kitchen as she made dinner. Which isn’t to say that he came back unscathed, the permanent limp and the bouts of haunted, wild eyed panic are testament enough to that. But really, the last thing she ever thought was that her son wouldn’t be coming home alone. Because as soon as these fits begin, Peter McVries is there with a hand on the back of his neck, ready to coax him into a chair and murmur reassurances low and quiet until the moment passes and Ray calms. It’s a debt she can never repay, and she doesn’t know how to react to this boy in her home.
Why did you save him? She wants to ask, but she’s not ready. Not yet. So she asks her other question.
“How old are you, Peter?”
He seems surprised at the question, but pleasantly so. She realizes now that it’s the first thing about him, not Ray, not the walk, that she’s asked.
“Twenty-five, ma’am.” He answers. The next logical fact hangs unspoken between them, Ray is twenty. There’s a look on Peter’s face like he wants to crack a joke, poke at some lighthearted shovel talk, but isn’t sure how she’ll take it. Do you think I’m too old for your boy, Mrs. Garraty?
Both of their attention is suddenly drawn by Ray, who stirs slightly and makes a faint, sleepy noise. They’re both still for a moment, waiting to see if he’ll wake, but Ray just burrows further down into the blankets stills once again. Peter looks at him with a tenderness that terrifies her, then reaches down to brush a lock of Ray’s hair behind his ear.
“I think he’s the only one in this house who doesn’t have any trouble sleeping.” He says, still looking down at Ray. “Your boy can sleep through just about anything, but I’m sure you know that already.”
“Ever since he was a baby.” Ginnie is unable to keep the smile from her voice. “My friends were all jealous, he could sleep all the way through the night.”
“That so?” Peter smiles at her, delighted at this tidbit from Ray’s past, then his gaze is drawn back down to her son once again. “Only baby to really sleep like a baby, huh?”
They’re quiet for another moment, and she almost asks him then. Why did you save him? But Peter breaks the silence first.
“He slept on the walk, too. Standing up and walking and everything. Don’t know if you saw.”
She did, but she couldn’t tell for sure if he was sleeping. Especially the first night, when there’d been so much death and chaos that she hadn’t gotten a good look at her son until there was a gun leveled to his head. But she still sought him out in fleeting glimpses and in the background of other shots. It was almost always accompanied by Peter McVries, side by side, holding Ray up, catching him when he stumbled, ushering him onward and watching out for him, even after Ray snapped at him like a wounded animal.
It got easier to find Ray in the crowd as the nights went on, when the walkers thinned and the camera could afford to linger on boys who weren’t about to be shot. She remembers now how McVries would say something inaudible and sling a protective arm around Ray before his head lolled against Peter’s shoulder.
Almost like he’s doing now. Even lying in his own bed, safe and no longer in fear of slowing down, he sleeps under Peter’s arm. The bed is small, she reasons, desperately. It’s the only way they can both fit. Ray had started to outgrow the bed when he was fourteen or so, but they’d never been able to afford a new one. And then when she didn’t need the space in her own anymore, there was one less set of hands to help drag it from one room to the other.
“He dreamed about you.” Peter startles her out of her thoughts, and when she looks up he’s looking right at her. “Other boys gave him grief for it, you know. The way boys do. But I thought it was sweet.”
“Really?”
“He’s lucky to have a mom like you. Real lucky. Real stupid, too, to try and leave a life like this behind.” He goes on, but isn’t looking at her anymore.
Instead he casts his eyes around the room, catching on the framed photo that sits on Ray’s nightstand. It’s facing away from her, but Ginnie doesn’t need to be able to see it to know that it’s the one taken on Ray’s sixth birthday. The one where he stands, gap toothed and beaming, between her and William.
There’s a story there that he doesn’t have to tell. She’s heard enough of them over the years. She thinks instead about Freeport, about how young and afraid Ray looked when he ran back to her. Not afraid of death, afraid she was mad, like when he was eight and broke one of the china plates she’d inherited from her mother. She almost lost him there. Right there on the pavement in front of her. If that had happened, she thinks she might just have laid down and died on the pavement next to him, and something tells her Peter McVries would have as well. It would have been a real mess, she thinks almost hysterically. A real traffic jam for the remaining walkers.
But he didn’t die. And the only thing that saved him was Peter. He’d saved him before, she’d seen it on the broadcast, but in Freeport she saw it in front of her. Undeniable proof of something she was still afraid to say.
So she doesn’t say it, instead she just steps further into the room until she’s standing at the foot of Ray’s bed. He still looks so young. He’ll always look young to her, she thinks, but she marvels at the way the Long Walk didn’t steal all the softness from him.
“Why did you save him?” She asks, finally.
“Don’t you know, Mrs. Garraty?” Peter looks up at her, and he looks almost sad.
When she realizes that he’s going to make her say it, she feels an irrational wave of anger wash over her. She thinks of the Owens boy, Jimmy, and the red finger shaped marks she’d left on Ray’s chubby little arm after dragging him away with how tight she was holding on. She thinks of Jan, the perfectly nice girl Ray had been seeing for so long who told her with barely concealed resentment how much of a gentleman her son was before slamming the door behind her. And she thinks of Peter McVries. The rain on the pavement, fuzzy through the television screen. The sound of the gunshots. The way Peter had screamed the same thing she’d screamed at the soldiers, what did you do? The way Ray clung to him as he bled, and said in words barely picked up by the microphones that’s why I love you. I love you Pete.
“Because you’re queer.” She whispers, mouth dry. “Because you’re queer for him.”
He raises an eyebrow at that.
“That’s one way of putting it.” He says. “I was gonna say it's because I love him.”
That’s why I love you. I love you, Pete.
“Well.” Ginnie swallows. It does nothing, her mouth is still dry. “It’s an odd place for that, but I suppose I still ought to thank you.”
Peter lets out a surprised laugh at that, just one startled “ha” before he can stop himself with a hand clapped over his mouth. Beside him, Ray stirs again, this time scrunching his eyes tight and reaching out to Peter with a clumsy, sleepy hand. Peter leans over him, shushing him and whispering something soft and sweet that Ginnie can’t quite make out. After a moment, Ray relaxes into Peter’s touch and the furrow between his brows disappears.
He hasn’t said it yet, the thing she’s so afraid of hearing, but she knows he’s going to. She knows as soon as he looks back at her, and the expression on his face changes from a blinding tenderness to a steely sort of protectiveness.
“If it was just me, Mrs. Garraty, I’d let you think whatever you’d like about people like me. If he didn’t need me, if he’d be happier without me, I’d have been out of your hair as soon as I brought your boy home.” Peter says. “But it’s not just me. And he’s my boy now, too. So I just gotta ask you one favor.”
“Anything.” Even compared to how hushed their entire conversation has been, her response is barely audible. The other shoe, she thinks. Here it comes. She wonders, if it came down to it, what Ray would do if she told Peter he had to leave.
“Don’t hate him.” He asks, so earnest and desperate. Begging like he did with Ray’s bleeding body in his arms when he pleaded, wished for the Major to spare Ray’s life. “Please, don’t push him away. It would crush him.”
It’s not what she’s expecting to hear, and it catches her off guard for a moment before the defensive walls go up again.
“I could never- I couldn’t hate him.” She protests. “He’s my son.”
It’s true and it’s not, and guilt twists low in her stomach. She could never hate her son, that’s undeniable. But she thinks of the angry red marks again, and the way Ray convulsed on her bedspread, wailing and pleading for her to not tell his father. She never did, and deep down she knows it’s because he wouldn’t have reacted the same. William, with his books and his words and all of the wonderful things about him that got him killed, would’ve told her that it’s just the way some people are. If he were the one home when Cathy Owens called, he would’ve sat Ray down to explain that maybe he was too young for playing like that (and Christ he was young, only seven or so), but if he grew up to be queer that would be okay. He’d just have to be careful because the world wasn’t kind to people like that. Some people wouldn’t understand. He wouldn’t be strict enough, Ray wouldn’t understand. Ray would just feel more confused, after all, he was just a child. He didn’t know what he was doing, he wasn’t queer. He was just a boy.
So she hadn’t told him. Instead she asked Ray how would you like it if I made you go out and walk down the street with no clothes on, because it might as well have been what he was doing. The shame, the eyes on you, all looking in shock and disgust, the wrongness of it was the same. And if he thought it was fine now, that was one thing, but what if he was older? What if Cathy Owens had called the Squads? She needed him safe, so she just watched fat tears roll down his round cheeks.
It wasn’t the first time she’d made Ray cry. Motherhood was a long slog of making your children cry because you said no. No, you can’t eat that fistful of mud. No, we can't afford that model train set. No, you can’t touch another boy like that. It wasn’t the first time she’d made him cry, but it was the first time she didn’t feel an immediate rush of regret. She was just relieved he understood how serious this all was.
The regret comes now, as she watches the gentle contentment on Ray’s face as he sleeps under the arm of the boy who saved him. The boy that he said he loved in what he was so sure were his final moments. Making Ray cry didn’t stop him from becoming a homosexual, it just made him cry.
“I couldn’t hate him.” Ginnie says again, softer this time. “Not now. Not after that, almost losing him like that.”
Peter looks relieved, and he doesn’t ask anything else of her. In that moment, she realizes she could never hate Peter McVries either.
“Good.” He says. “That’s good.”
“There are things...” She starts, suddenly desperate to explain herself for the things that this boy, who has known Ray barely three weeks, could never know. “When Ray was young. There was a boy down the street, and there were things that I told him...”
“Hey, it’s alright.”
“But I was just scared,” She’s babbling now, and she can feel her eyes start to sting. “He’s my baby, I didn’t want anything to hurt him. I wanted to make sure he was safe.”
“I know,” And he did, didn’t he? They were maybe the only two people on earth who really did feel that desperate protectiveness. “I meant it when I said he’s lucky to have a mom like you, and I still mean it. But I promise you Mrs. Garraty, I won’t let anyone hurt him. I’ll keep our boy safe.”
Tucked between Peter and the wall, Ray stirs one more time. This time, he scrunches his face up and rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand like a little boy.
“Pete.” He murmurs, free hand reaching out to paw at the other boy in a clumsy, kittenish gesture. “Light’s on.”
“Just doing some reading, baby.” The pet name slips out almost involuntarily as Peter’s attention is absorbed by Ray once again. He moves to switch the bedside lamp off, but before he can, Ray’s eyes have adjusted to the light and he sits bolt upright in bed.
“Mom.” She tries not to notice how Ray contracts, drawing his hands away from Peter and up to his chest. For all the space he puts between himself and the other boy, Ray looks terrified that Peter will be torn away from him. “Mom we were just -”
She knows what he’s thinking, as much as she hoped he’d forgotten the whole Owens business. How would you like it if I made you go out and walk down the street without your clothes on? She knows her son loves her, but it doesn’t make the memory of hurting him any easier to bear.
“It’s alright, Ray.” Pete says, calm and steady as always. “Your mom and I were just talking. Neither of us could get much sleep.”
“Oh,” Ray looks between the two of them, relaxing slightly when he’s sure that there’s no tension, no danger of himself being ordered to walk naked down the street or Pete being sent away. “Okay.”
“Go back to bed, honey. I’ll see you in the morning.” She says. Then, “You too, Peter. You really ought to get some sleep.”
“I’ll do my best, Mrs. Garraty.” Peter smiles. His arm has found its way around Ray’s shoulder again, and both of them look more steady now. Maybe he can get some sleep now.
“Goodnight mom.”
“Goodnight, boys.” She turns to leave, but pauses at the doorway to look back at them, like sardines in Ray’s twin bed. “You boys are too big to be sharing that bed. Tomorrow you can give me a hand with bringing the bed from my room down here. Otherwise I think poor Peter will keep waking up on the floor.”